1. They know when to quit.
2. They redesign processes.
3. They combat distortions of reality.
4. They find the right environment.
5. They habitually rewrite the habits.
Here's my take on these five:
1. It's taken be a long time to learn when to quit, but being in the journalism school has taught me how to go with the flow.
2. As designers it is our job to execute a vision, meld it with editors and the art director's thoughts and continually redesign everything we do. In doing so we learn our design personality and because every designer is different, we tend to change what used to be.
3. A headline is meant to grab a reader's attention, but it may not include the whole story. And a photo is only a single image, so it's not the same as being there. But as designers it is our job to bring the headline, the text, the captions/pull quotes and photos together in a way that the readers can engage in the story without being lost for understanding.
4. Just as each of us carries around an array of emotions, so do the stories we design. The design sets the initial mood for the story before even a single word is read, so without the perfect environment the story is lost.
5. Designers are weird; we all have our quirks. We get into a niche with something we like and we go with it -- probably more than once, because we know it works. But we also get bored easily and we need something new and different; something people have never seen before. So the niches (or habits) of ours change repeatedly.
2. As designers it is our job to execute a vision, meld it with editors and the art director's thoughts and continually redesign everything we do. In doing so we learn our design personality and because every designer is different, we tend to change what used to be.
3. A headline is meant to grab a reader's attention, but it may not include the whole story. And a photo is only a single image, so it's not the same as being there. But as designers it is our job to bring the headline, the text, the captions/pull quotes and photos together in a way that the readers can engage in the story without being lost for understanding.
4. Just as each of us carries around an array of emotions, so do the stories we design. The design sets the initial mood for the story before even a single word is read, so without the perfect environment the story is lost.
5. Designers are weird; we all have our quirks. We get into a niche with something we like and we go with it -- probably more than once, because we know it works. But we also get bored easily and we need something new and different; something people have never seen before. So the niches (or habits) of ours change repeatedly.
I think it finally took me til senior year to learn when to quit, and that's just because there's so many different things going on in this class that there's just no way you can spend as much time as you'll always want to on assignments. I think it's a good lesson to learn before we head out into the real world with daily deadlines. With design, there's always something that can be improved on, but you have to go with your best effort considering the time constraints.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like everyone is having particular difficulty with the "when to quit" characteristic. I know I am definitely guilty of logging way too many hours in Lee Hills Hall. You know, there are always improvements I could make to a page, but you have to learn when to put it to rest. I think being able to stop will become easier once we're more efficient with the programs, too. The faster we can design something and the better we can navigate the software, the easier all of this becomes.
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